“About five miles, sir.”
“Give me a real hard starboard turn, Chief. I want to turn and point our nose right in front of him and go charging in like we’re going to ram.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Start pinging, sonar. I want to go close, but I don’t want to trade paint.”
“Yes, sir.”
The deck tilted as the chief had the helmsman bring Utah hard starboard. She came around like an airplane with her planes and rudder biting the water with a fierce grip. Then she straightened out.
“Faster, Chief. Another ten knots, I think.”
The Chinese boat was a bit to the left and perhaps fifty feet above them. The distances became stark as the two submarines rushed together, now at a combined speed of almost fifty knots, about sixty miles per hour.
“When we are one mile apart, we turn her, Chief, to port, go down his starboard side. We will fire more noisemakers as we pass.”
And that is what they did. They fired three more noisemakers as they were abeam the Chinese sub, then hit the turbulence she had left in her wake. The boat bucked and writhed. No doubt the Chinese sailors were also getting bounced around in Utah’s wake.
“Passive on the sonar,” Roscoe Hanna said. “Turn us to the south, Chief, and let’s get the hell out of here as fast as we can go.”
When the four Zulu Cobras from Hornet rendezvoused with the eastbound Sealions, two sections of F/A-18 Hornets were already overhead. The helicopters were under the overcast, flying at about one thousand feet. Their position lights twinkled in the vast darkness over the night sea.
Above the overcast, the fighters were probing the night with their radars while being illuminated by Chinese search radars. The pilots could hear the baritone tones as the radar beams swept over them. This information was data-linked to an E-2 Hawkeye in an orbit at thirty thousand feet over United States, and from there passed to the Combat Information Center and Flag Plot aboard the ship. From there it went by satellite to the White House Situation Room, where Cart McKiernan and Jake Grafton were watching.
Real-time text messages from Captain Joe Child and Lieutenant Howie Peavy scrolled across one of the large projection screens. The SEAL raid had been a success; all the men were coming out; they had egressed after sinking a harbor patrol boat and taking out several machine gunners aboard Liaoning.
“A nice job,” the CNO muttered. At the duty desk, one of the officers was on the telephone, no doubt briefing Sal Molina.
Grafton and the admiral watched as two bogeys climbed away from an airfield near the Qingdao naval base in real time, rendezvoused and headed out to sea, eastbound and climbing.
McKiernan looked at his watch. “The SEALs cracked that keel two and a half hours ago. Since then the PLAN has been trying to figure out what happened and what to do about it.”
These two had discussed all this, of course, before they went to see the president for approval of the SEAL raid. “The Chinese will be surprised, embarrassed and probably outraged,” Grafton argued, “yet they won’t shoot unless they are fired upon. No Chinese officer is going to take the responsibility for starting World War III.”
“You hope,” Jurgen Schulz glowered.
The secretary of state, Owen Lancaster, cleared his throat. He was a white-haired Brahmin who had been helping hold up the New England end of the establishment for at least fifty years. Although no one knew how he voted, if he did, he had been routinely appointed to key ambassadorships by thirty years’ worth of presidents. This president had elevated him to run the State Department, to the relief of a great many Americans who expected another party hack.
Lancaster was no fan of Jake Grafton, with whom he had crossed swords several times in the past. Still, he eyed McKiernan and Grafton carefully, then spoke to the president. “The Chinese need to be taught a lesson. That bomb in Norfolk was a gambit approved at the very top. We can’t let it pass. If we do, sooner or later we will be in a shooting war in the Far East or we will be run out of there with our tails between our legs. We must make our choice now. Tomorrow will be too late.”
The president deferred to Lancaster. “Do it,” he told Cart McKiernan.
So Grafton and McKiernan had gotten their permission. Now they sat in the back row of the White House Situation Room watching jets rush together over the Yellow Sea and hoped they had correctly predicted the Chinese reaction.
Yet neither man was really worried. Even if some Chinese pilot opened fire, he would quickly go into the sea, and cooler heads would prevail in Beijing. Political provocations are wonderful PR for the home folks, but when one encounters naked steel, it is time to reassess. Are you ready to fight?
The two American sections of Hornets, two fighters in each section, turned so that the Chinese formation went between them; then they turned hard to come in at an angle from each side, a classic rendezvous. But as the Chinese pilots knew, the Americans were in their rear quadrant pulling lead. If the Americans chose to shoot, they were perfectly set up for it.
The flight leader reported that the Chinese jets had their external lights on, as the American fighters did. Rear Admiral Toad Tarkington passed that comment on to Washington immediately, and both McKiernan and Grafton relaxed a bit when they heard it. The Chinese pilots had not been sent to shoot down an American plane or two. If they had, they would have never let the Americans get into a firing position.
McKiernan slapped Grafton on the shoulder again and dug a pack of chewing gum out of his pocket.
When the last of the helicopters and fighters were back aboard ship and Hornet had recovered her two Sealions, McKiernan and Grafton stood, stretched and strolled out of the Situation Room. They met Sal Molina coming in.
“We’re going over to the Willard for steaks and drinks,” Grafton told the president’s man. “You want to come along?”
He did. Late that night the Willard valet at the door hailed taxis to take all three men home.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
If we desire to avoid insult, we must be able to repel it; if we desire to secure peace, one of the most powerful instruments of our rising prosperity, it must be known that we are at all times ready for War.
Not a word of the events in Qingdao harbor or the Yellow Sea that January night ever made it into print, the Internet, or broadcast radio or television. It was as if Liaoning were still afloat. Satellite reconnaissance showed that she probably wasn’t.
Three days after the event, the Chinese ambassador, who spoke excellent English, called on the State Department to deliver a note from the Chinese government. He was ushered into the office of the secretary, Owen Lancaster.
“Before you deliver your note, sir, I have something to show you,” Lancaster said. “Then, perhaps, you and I can have a private, off-the-record discussion.”
Lancaster’s limo was waiting. Without a word being said, the driver headed for Joint Base Andrews, the air force side. The limo was waved through toward a hangar surrounded by air force MPs wearing helmets and sidearms and carrying assault rifles. Some of them had dogs on leashes.
A colonel escorted Lancaster and his guest into the hangar, which was empty except for a bomb dolly in the middle of the thing. The colonel let Lancaster and the ambassador proceed alone. Lancaster stopped beside the bomb dolly.
“This, Mr. Ambassador, is a Chinese nuclear weapon. It was recovered from the Norfolk naval base, where it was submerged near the entrance to the harbor.”